Anime Nano Podcast #18: Revenge of the Nano

The Anime Nano Podcast is finally off of hiatus! This week, we cover stuff like the Basugasubakuhatsu Karaoke Contest, recent licenses, SaiGAR, and the new Winter season anime! We also go through the piled up questions from the mailbag.

I don’t really want to get into a Genre Debate, but Lain is definitely not Horror. It doesn’t have ANY Horror genre conventions (that I can think of, at least). If you have to put it in a genre, it’s Transhumanist.

The Manabi girls do look like they have chubby faces and skinny bodies it’s weird! Maybe an evil animator snuck into where they were making Kanon and stole the snow bunny idea? I want a 3ft Keroro to send round the world on one of those ‘take me on holiday and send back photos’ then there could be pictures of Keroro all round the world failing to take over, getting molested by wild animals. Nooo, how can you not like Lain, it was awesome in a cute pretentious kind of way. I will totally go digg your podcast now – digg? That sounds so weird.

Taiyaki: I believe I know the two different taiyaki Hinano bought as most Korean Grocery stores carry one by Korean company and another by Japanese company. The Japanese company version is about twice as expansive compared to the Korean one is most locations. The Korean version is made by a company with BAD REPUTATION for quality. I am somewhat offended as using this sole example to condemn the ‘Korean taiyaki’ as there really isn’t any fundamental difference in ingredient and cooking method: The Korean version used cheaper ingredient and equipments. Anyone who tried to experiement with cooking would know how much difference there can be between salt, pepper, and sugar of different company. Another way of saying this is, just because many finds Pizza Hut’s Pizza disagreeable, does it mean all ‘American’ Pizza is bad? One more example: I found the Meijer brand powdered sugar to be somewhat bitter and sour, while Domino brand powdered sugar didn’t have those unpleasant tastes. I would be wrong to condemn all powdered sugar sold in Meijer store to be bad, just because Meijer Brand powdered sugar was bad.

In Korea, there exist so many different variety of taiyakis, that some Japanese might think of it as being sacrilegious to their taiyaki. The best I have ever tasted are the ones made by my wife, who also is a Korean.

As for the manga vs. manwha debate, here are the two links where the fight has occurred. I like to point out that Jpmeyer is right on saying there is a long history of Koreans and Japanese stealing things from each other. What is sad is that many people wrongly believes so many things to be Japanese, when, in truth, they are from China or Korea.

Regarding the question about keeping or throwing away manga– in Japan (at least from my experience), it’s quite common to buy manga, read it, then throw it away when you’re done. I suspect Americans are more into collecting manga because it’s a bit harder to obtain than in Japan.

I need to point out that the link beside my name gives only very biased view of the whole situation. As jpmeyer mentioned, Korea and Japan has been stealing from each other often. If you consider historical perspective, there are many things Japan literally stole from Korea and China. Even today, they borrow ideas from each other, but usually don’t give any credits to each other. Sadly, too many Korean leaders are content copying whatever that was successful in Japan.

There are some groups of Japanese who makes it their mission to spread bad words about Korea through internet and other mediums. I have stumbled upon one in AnimeSuki Forum: The person was so blatant about his bigotry in his only 2 posts he made on the forum, his posts were quickly deleted by forum administrator. The tactic they use is to find a real wrongdoing by Koreans and publicize it. If out of 100 events, there were 10 good deeds by Korean, 85 neutral, and 5 bad deeds, they will tout the 5 bad as if it represents all 100 events. This is a tactic frequently employed by many radical groups including those that has been branded as terrorist organizations by US government. Since these guys frequent many websites that shows interest in Japanese culture, it won’t be long until they become very active in anime blog sites and anime discussion forums. I felt, as a Korean, I need to make people aware of this.

I watched Higurashi because I kept hearing Hinano mentioning it. And let me say, it’s made me paranoid. However, I LOVE it. It makes me twitch sometimes, which i take as a good sign. ^_^ I watched it with waffo up to episode five. Now, to keep going.

I remember reading Deltora Quest a few years back. It’s for kids, but i still cant wait to see it. Is that bad?

JP’s anime club sounds a lot more fun than mine. I wish we had more time and our school wasnt so damned strict. We’ve been trying to take a trip to a con for 3 years now.

You guys never answered my third question. Was that some ploy as to escape the number 4?

2) If you guys could relate yourselves to an anime character, who would that be? Personality, not looks. Or both ^_^

3) do you have an anime dirty little secret? Like a bad dub in the back of your closet that you cant get rid of becuase it holds so many memories? Like Cardcaptors or Pokemon or Zoids or Sailor Moon or something. I know a lot of people do. And if you do, what is it?

Hmmm, I dunno. I suppose Negi does display some GAR qualities in the later volumes of the manga, but even in just Negima Kotaro is far, far more GAR than Negi is. In either case, Negi has no right being in a SAIGAR tourney. He just isn’t GAR enough.

Wow such a shame (if it gone for sure), I came into this really late and loved it since I listened to it. That and I always wanted to do a guest thing thought that would just be awesome and stuff (hey, hey still up for it too I have Skype and stuff user name is teh_shadro just by the off chance I would get a call to guess or something crazy :P). That and I got a lot of idea for my podcast kinda off of this and how random works so well. But there is my few sense.